Bradley Battersby
Chair, Moving Pictures department
Bradley Battersby brings to his position a wide range of experience both in the film industry as a writer and director, and academia as an instructor. Since graduating from Stanford University, and the American Film Institute, Brad has written and directed four feature films, written numerous screenplays, and directed a number of television episodes and commercials. He has directed such acclaimed actors as Martin Landau, Courtney Cox, Frank Sinatra, Nastassja Kinski, Peter Coyote, and Kris Kristofferson. As an educator, he has taught at the American Film Institute, the Los Angeles Film School, UCLA Extension, Chapman University and the Film and Television Workshops in Rockport, Maine. While leading the only high school film program of its kind, Brad is enjoying film festival awards and great reviews for his newest feature film, Jesus the Driver.

Ira Abrams
Moving Pictures instructor
Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Social Relations/Social Anthropology from Harvard University and a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently a faculty member at the Idyllwild Arts Academy where he teaches in the Moving Pictures Department, along with serving as Institutional Director of ScriptEd Only Screenwriting Conservatory, a distance learning screenwriting program. Ira is a member of the Producers Guild of America and serves as President, Board of Directors of CineStory, a national non-profit screenwriter’s organization. He has been a Visiting Professor of Film and Television at Chapman University, Chair and Professor, Department of Film and Video at Columbia College in Chicago, IL, Associate Professor of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas, Austin and a visiting faculty member at the Instituto Tecnologico, Monterrey, Mexico, the International Film and Television Workshops, Oaxaca, Mexico and Rockport, Maine, and the University of Manchester, England. As a professional filmmaker, Ira is president of Xaibe Productions, Inc. which produces series for broadcast and educational use. He has been a series producer for Chicago Tomorrow, WTTW Public Television, Chicago and executive producer for many educational and documentary films and television productions.

June Petrie-Battersby
Screen writing instructor
B.A. French Literature, Pomona College, California. June has worked in many fields, including publishing, entertainment, and education. After an internship at The Nation magazine, June worked as an Assistant Editor, Fiction, at Doubleday & Company. Subsequently, she worked for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in New York, running its New York book-to-film acquisition department until she was transferred to the West Coast and promoted to Vice President of Creative Affairs, Film Division. As an independent producer, June co-produced the independent film The Joyriders, starring Martin Landau, and the acclaimed television movie, Song of the Lark, based on the novel by Willa Cather. June has served as a script analyst to HBO, Dreamworks, and Creative Artists Agency, and has headed the research division of a reality series.